A protocol for the comparison of telephone and in-person interview modalities: duration, richness, and costs in the context of exploring determinants of equitable access to community health services in Meru, Kenya

Background: Our research team is conducting phenomenological interviews with people who have not been able to access health services in Meru County, Kenya, aiming to explore the barriers they face and their perceptions of how we could modify our community outreach services to improve accessibility. We plan to conduct an embedded study that compares in-person and telephone interview modalities in terms of the richness of the data and the resources required for each modality. Methods/Design: This is a qualitative mode comparison study, embedded within a broader project to understand and address the issues that lead to inequitable access to local outreach clinics in Kenya. We will recruit at least 40 people who have been referred to local services but who have not been able to attend. We will conduct in-person interviews with half of these people, and telephone interviews with the other half. We will use random numbers to determine the modality that is used for each participant. All interviews will be conducted in the same month by a team of six research assistants who will use the same topic guide and analytic matrix for each interview. For all interviews conducted in each mode we will record and compare the mean duration; mean number of themes reported by each participant; total number of themes reported; interviewer rating of perceived richness; interviewer rating of perceived ease of building rapport; number of days taken by the team to complete all interviews; and all costs associated with conducting the interviews. Discussion: The findings will help us to weigh up the relative strengths and weaknesses of each modality for our research context. Given that we are exploring a focused research question in a fairly homogenous population, we anticipate that there may not be a meaningful difference in the number of themes reported.